This margin thing is killing me as well man. They're doing a TON to make 5 extra dollars. I know that 5 dollars over 1000s of units may turn into $100k, but this is why Apple does better than these OEMs sometimes.Apple knows their software in and out and makes sure the laptop they produce can run it in all scenarios the AVERAGE user will use it in.These OEMs make a laptop to hit a pricepoint, and make their profit margin and don't care about performance at all. It's why people will get a bad perception of their company."I bought Asus laptop and it was cheap, but it also sucked!!!!"Releasing a product that barely does it may seem good for short term but hurts longterm perception of the company to the average consumer who doesn't care about hardware and just expects everything they purchase to work.Reply

The new SDP rating is a bit of a mess. It's lower than TDP ratings as it takes an average including light usage like web browsing. This surely means that a processor with a higher burst performance will get a much lower rating. I guess that the high-end iteration of the new Atom simply was found to draw too much power under load for them to be happy with it.Reply

Waiting a look in Bay Trail M + SATA, PleaseNote, Atom Bay Trail T is still no support SATA and PCIe.

in Windows x86 OS I dislike the eMMC storage system, it is an execrable design, the heavyweight Windows x86 OS is fully unlike in the lightweight Android OS.Windows needs SATA and PCIe, but Atom Bay Trail T is still no support SATA and PCIe.

Intel actually wanted in Android to compete with ARM processor, does not really want Bay Trail T to help Windows tablet to compete market, because the x86 processor is almost no another competitor! Now is merely Intel wanted to control the Android market!Reply

The older v4.41 specification eMMC drives are pretty slow but they're starting to improve... Newer models can now take advantage of the newer v4.5 specification that doubles the max bandwidth and introduces RAM based cache memory to significantly boost eMMC performance.

They'll still be a lot slower than a modern SSD but at least not slower than a HDD anymore...

And the next bump in performance will be out early next year with the next version update for eMMC that allows for a little better than SATA II performance finally...

Mind, eMMC is a single chip design and SSDs are multiple chips... So it's harder to get performance from a single chip but they're slowly getting there...Reply

The pricing of the Asus T100 with 10" display in a toylike "plasticky" case priced around $400 for only 2GB of memory and no SATA drive capability shows how limited options OEMs have with Baytrail Atoms. It loses especially badly in graphics to a quad core Kabini.

By comparison, the Toshiba Satellite 15.6 Touchscreen C55DT-A5307 sells for $399.99 and comes with quad core A6-5200 Kabini, 4GB memory and 500GB drive. Users can upgrade to more memory and SSD drives. By any comparison, it is a much better value and provides overall great PC user experience versus limited Asus T100 for the same price.

A 15.6" laptop meets a completely different use case than a 10" tablet hybrid. The Tablet is a portable consumption machine that can do some work in a pinch. A 15.6" laptop is a work / play machine that can be portable. I don't see shoppers really cross shopping the two. I see people with both.Reply

Can you tell us how the factory restore works? Is there a proprietory backup software? Or does it use Windows Refresh? How do you refresh it if you cannot boot into Windows? Is there a special key combination that would cause it to enter the recovery mode when pressed? Can you completely remove the recovery partition from the drives and make a USB recovery drive in case you are going for the 32GB model?Reply

in Windows x86 OS I dislike the eMMC storage system, it is an execrable design, the heavyweight Windows x86 OS is fully unlike in the lightweight Android OS, Windows needs SATA and PCIe, but Atom Bay Trail T is still no support SATA and PCIe.

Intel actually wanted in Android to compete with ARM processor, does not really want Bay Trail T to help Windows tablet to compete market, because the x86 processor is almost no another competitor! Now is Intel wanted to control the Android market!Reply

If just the CPU then I'd agree with you but they have clearly tried their best to reduce the overall price in a whole lot of areas such as Screen, CPU, storage, Battery capacity (eg not in dock), plastic body instead of metal etc in order to meet the overall price point they were targeting. . Its entry level, and I think decent for the price point. There are lots of options out there that have better specs but the come with a bigger price tag as well.Reply

Considering this thing is $350 dollars, you've got to cut corners somewhere. You and the person below you are expecting a little too much for this price point. The factory display can probably be calibrated, I'm sure Anandtech can get to posting the calibrated figures when/if they have the time. Reply

Really these rebadged netbooks are 2 years ahead of their time. In 2 years they'll have to cut fewer corners at this price point.My current 6y/o Merom desktop is starting to show its age and the high end Bay Trails offer performance a tad below what my desktop can do CPU-wise. $350 is a very attractive price point, but if the performance is less than what I have it's not worth it at any price. In a couple of years we will finally get Atoms that can compete with low end Nehalem/Westmere/Sandy Bridge chips but capable of fitting in a fanless sub-2lb notebook with 128gb flash and 1080p screen in the $350 price range. Until then, we will have to keep cutting corners.Reply

Your comparision with a desktop core makes little sense. This Atom a 2W, US$37 part. Comparing it to a more expensive, big core of years before is pointless, as absolute performance is not the target here.Reply

I'm curious to what extent the last few dollars corner cutting $350 price tag was influenced by their experience with the Vivo models last year. That hybrid AFAIK was $400 with the last gen Atom, and sold quite poor. Reply

I agree, plus the keyboard in this case does not have any additional battery in it like the Acer W510 keyboard that adds another 9 hrs of battery life, but heavy. This device as tested yielded 11 hrs. That is very good battery life.Reply

Great review, but I am not sure if the approach is correct. This is clearly targeted at people with small budgets, people who have $300-$400 to spend on a single computing device. This is a truly amazing value for money. Honestly, the targeted crowd aren't concerned that Delta-E is not under 6 as much as getting Windows and Office and a 8+ hour battery life for just $350!

Yes, the Dell Venue Pro 11 promises to be much better, but it is also more expensive. I'm looking forward to Asus making a similarly high-end Bay Trail Windows 8.1 tablet. There's no going back to Android/iOS once I got acclimatised to Metro. Reply

I currently use a surface pro, used to have a nexus 10, and gf has an ipad.

Benefits of iOS/android tablets:

1) Hit the power button, and they're on, ready to go in an instant because they were idling. Not so on laptops, it'll take at least a couple (more like few to several) seconds for the system to wake, reconnect to the network.

2) Smoothness. Unless you run IE (which is ipad-smooth, but unfortunately IE kinda sucks), chrome does not move nearly as smooth as it does on iOS and to a lesser degree android.

3) Until haswell and it's lesser forms were released, battery life. Now it's not so much of an issue.

4) Missing apps may not be a dealbreaker for you, but the lack of popular tablet games is a huge deal breaker for those who use their devices only for the consumption of media.

seriously, what non Apple iOS app cant be replaced by the millions of apps on x86 windows? sorry you cant use the app argument. the whole reason apple made apps was to get around the fact that they weren't x86Reply

uh.. what? My sandy bridge Acer 3830TG can sleep (S3, not hibernate) for over 3 weeks. An Asus TF300 android tablet I had could only sleep for 5-7 days, and it had the equivalent of "connected standby" disabled (same as the laptop).Reply

Genuinely a bit stumped by people moaning about this. He said it's a great product with fantastic potential that is almost perfect. Lest we forget this is a tablet with a fully fledged os behind it. What do people expect for the price point. It's not a laptop replacement, then again a laptop is not a tablet replacement. For the money. For what you get its fantastic. It's a real middle ground machine. If you have a desktop or heavy duty laptop at home and want something portable but with the ability to do a bit more this thing is perfect. The Dell machines will be more expensive of that I have no doubt and the surface pro is double the money. You can argue about performance till you're blue in the face. Want impure over performance. Buy a machine and spend the money. You pays your monies you takes your choice. Personally I'm selling my MBA 11" to fund this. Reply

Exactly. I see it as a tablet that can double up as a laptop in a pinch. I'm still unsure about apps in tablet mode though: are there good apps for dlna, LAN, video... I'd hate to have to switch back to Desktop for Touch use...Reply

I have an old HP 10" Netbook that is very small, a newer 13" Lenovo that I can't use in economy class... I guess the sweet spot for me is at 11.6", which is a pity because that Asus looks very nice for the price.Reply

Thanks for clearly laying out the available storage--that was a big concern for a device like this for me. Two questions--of the 19 GiB occupied at boot, does that include the pagefile and hibernation file (which should admittedly be much smaller than on a typical machine with 8GB RAM)? And is the remaining ~10 GiB partition accessible at all? Obviously this is going to be a larger issue on the 32GB version--with the same 19GiB occupied, they obviously can't leave the entire remaining 10GiB inaccessible, so I'm curious how some of that storage is reclaimed.

Also, am I correct that the pricing is $350 for the 32GB model and $400 for the 64GB, and that both include the dock? Your table is pretty confusing where it says "$349/$399 (including dock)"--makes it seem like the extra $50 gets you the dock, rather than extra storage.

Anyway, it's an interesting device. Honestly, though, I remain unconvinced that the 10" form factor is worth anything at all; I can only assume it was spurred on by the iPad and all the me-too Android tablets that followed. Your experiences with the keyboard reinforce the fact that 10" is really too small for a clamshell, and smaller tablets have proven to be more popular for "sit back and read, browse the internet, and watch YouTube" experience--even Apple had to concede on the iPad mini front.

I have both an iPad mini and a Galaxy Tab 7.7 and gravitate to my 13" ultrabook nine times out of ten, so I have concluded that I'm not a tablet person, but I'm watching with interest to see if the upcoming 8" Windows tablets can be successful.Reply

Battery Life seems acceptable, at least it stayed more or less the same as Clover Trail and being quicker at the same time.

However, 2GB RAM is quite concerning here, I personally use a ThinkPad Tablet 2 at school,which can use 1.8GB RAM with just OneNote & IE & some PDF documents.Using Bay Trail as 32-bit SoC with 2GB RAM & Windows is not a good idea IMO,it is not that sufficient by today standard.Reply

This is a good example why Intel's approach of really low-end devices succeeds and why Microsoft's Windows RT attempts fail. Intel gets ~30 USD, Microsoft still gets a fair share of licensing money but the user gets a full 2013 Home edition suite including damn macro/vba-support that RT doesn't provide. It supports connected standby (Surface 2 don't), but I would wait till these devices run 64-bit Windows. It does show that when they run the exact same platform and Metro is basically just the start screen that is still powered by Win32 underneath it does make RT entirely pointless. It has still better battery life than first gen RT-devices. Dock is obviously an necessity for all the Win32 apps this thing is suppose to runReply

"Redefining the Entry Level Windows Notebook" how is it not? Great display, Decent performance without a bad IO system, and amazing battery life. There wasn't a single $350 notebook on the market a year ago that would have given you that.Reply

Seriously though, this isn't an entry level notebook, its a slightly odd hybrid device. With associated compromises noted in the review. Anyone know if we're going to get normal notebooks with similar specs as well?Reply

"Intel's Atom can barely keep up with LAST YEAR's ARM chips, in both CPU and GPU"

You seem to have problem with reading, The Samsung Note 10.1 has the latest top of the range Samsung big.little quad core with the latest Mali 628 and yet loses out to the Atom in every CPU test. And this isn't even top of the range...

Wow... I've never seen a device with colors this much out of wack. The beauty of this thing running Windows is that it can be fixed with a color calibrator though. It's a shame about the poor brightness though.

Either way the latest batch of Win 8.1 tablets are shaping up nicely. Are there any plans to review any of the smaller 8" tablets like the Dell Venue 8 pro or Lenovo Miix 2?Reply

I bought a win8 tablet on clearance (Iconia W3 for $249) and have to say I'm never going back to IOS or Android. It's even gone so far as replaced my netbook and I only lug around my 15" laptop when I need the extra power for school or work. I just don't get all the win8 hate, it sure has made my life easier.Reply

"...you can obviously run nearly all old x86/Windows applications. This is a huge deal as it means you can replace IE11 with Chrome...the tablet experience alone isn't as good as what you'd get on Android or iOS."

I stopped reading at the end of that paragraph. Your anti Microsoft bias is showing again.Reply

IE 10/11 make way more sense in touch input than Firefox/Chrome.The touch and gesture support is good and sensible, and it is way smoother than them in low end Clover Trails.Firefox is still my choice for Desktop and Laptops, but for Windows Tablet in Touch mode, IE10/11 is the better pick.Reply

The man keep on harping about Chromebooks like some Google PR parrot.Breaking News to the editor: Chrome can be installed on Windows 8/8.1

if he was besides me I would ask him: why should I waste my money in a Chromebook when I can get this x86 full windows OS PC that provides the samething as the Chromebook (Chrome browser), x86 compatiblity and the new Metro UI?Reply

Yes and I also disagree with Anand when he claims the multitasking win is due to Clovertrail and not Windows 8.1.

My Surface RT can multitask very easily and it has far less performance than the Chromebook's A15s.

ChromeOS is just junk. It's always been junk and it's still a glorified web browser OS.

Asus has a decent machine here, and for a great price.

Really the only thing Windows 8.1 needs at this point is more quality apps. There's lots of apps but many of them suck. That can be said of other app ecosystems as well but overall the number of quality apps are higher due to sheer volume.Reply

I see that in the article there seems to be a big deal about the poor calibration of the screen. On most tablets this is a valid concern, however on x86 Windows tablets, although it may be worth mentioning, it's a complete non-issue for anybody that cares: The display can be calibrated manually :).Reply

If you are broke and your laptop just broke and u rly need something now and can't wait and save money i guess this is a good choice. I'm kinda in love with the yoga pro 2 13". 8GB ram core i5 256GB SSD on sale for 1100.Reply

people are just finding a better mix functioned device. i am sure most people here have a power desktop that can beat yoga pro's performance easily, and also have an ipad or android tablet can beat yoga pro's portability and battery life easily. but we are tired of switching between and trying to find one device that can be a tablet + netbook with enough power and long battery life. Reply

Process Lasso will seriously boost response = apparent performance, where that's a concern. I'm still running two old Asus eeePC netbooks with weak processors and PL makes a huge difference. It takes them from PITA to passable, or even pleasant except when the slow HD bogs down.

I can't say enough good things about Process Lasso, and just realized that here is a good place to mention it. Because these new Asus machines run Windows, they can run PL. With that and the fast storage I'd bet the lower CPU grade won't mean much in pactice.Reply

Frankly, it doesn't make sense. Chrome might have been at some point better, but I don¨t think it is true for some time.He might want to update his knowledge, it is out of date by quite few years.(And the only thing Chrome had was Javascript performance, nothing else)Reply

It is listed to release today but no stores carry it and Amazon won't do saturday delivery, I guess I will have to wait until Monday, I wish the review had some actual games on the performance I'm curious to see how it does on some older ones.Reply

Because of the pricepoint of this laptop and the fact that it's running full windows, I find most of these benchmarks to be UTTERLY useless.I am not crossbuying a laptop with keyboard vs a tablet.I think this is more for us looking to upgrade our laptops vs other entry level laptops (like haswell entry level). Feel most of these benchmarks are quite useless when it comes to comparisons. I'd rather see it compared vsCore2DuoIvybridge CeleronHaswell CeleronOther <350 laptops.

Dunno how I can compare an Android laptop I can't use anything with(exaggeration) compared to Windows.

Also, slightly annoying that these companies think 2GB of ram is acceptable. Just add another 2GB and put it at cost rather than need to make a margin on EVERY single thing. 2GB of ram would add what? 10-20 dollars extra tops? Probably less since they buy it in bulk... Reply

This^^I want to buy the product for web browsing and light gaming in bed. The only laptop I ever owned (broke after a year) was an HP with a Core2Duo 1.8gig processor, 4 gigs DDR2, and an 8600M GS on Windows Vista. The laptop was fantastic at even moderate to heavy gaming and I could play Far Cry 2 at an enjoyable frame-rate at pretty high settings (I know the game sucks, but the visuals it could pull off blew my mind on a laptop). So I'd rather see how it stacks up to a ~4 year old laptop in terms of performance because I won't end up buying it if I can't play: STALKER, Mount and Blade, and AI War on it.Reply

Thanks for the review. It has solidified that if nothing "better" comes out between now and the holidays I'll be selling my iPad 2 and getting a T100.

It certainly doesn't sound perfect, but it does sound "good enough" for me. I need a tablet that is a decent content consumption device. It needs to have a decent enough panel in it that it doesn't hurt my eyes or my pride to use it. It needs to be able to be decent for watching movies, listening to music, looking at photos, browsing the web and writing email. Windows 8.1 and the T100 seem to have that.

As a bonus this means I can leave my HP Envy 4t at home on occasion when traveling light, and still have a machine that can use Lightroom 4. It doesn't have to be super fast, but it has to be capable of running it, which it sounds like this will. It should be on par or faster than the old Turino based 17" Toshiba laptop my wife used to have a few years ago, which I used Lightroom on for on the road image review/light editing. Also bonus points for being able to run some older Windows based games with a bluetooth game pad or keyboard/trackpad/wireless mouse.

$399 for the 64GB version plus around $50 for a 64GB microSD card isn't too bad. I would like to see what kind of performance the microSD card slot is capable of though to judge what kind of card I should get for it.

I do wish Asus at least had an option to bump the silicon up to the Z3770 and 4GB of memory. I'd gladly pay an extra $50 for that. I'd just as gladly pay $100 extra for the Z3770, 4GB of memory, dual stream dual band Wifi (bonus points of 802.11ac) and a better quality panel that was 900p.

For me my absolute max budget is $500 for a "tablet" and I doubt I'd ever be willing to pay more than that. I'd of course rather spend less, so $399 is nice...but again, I'd rather spend a bit more for even faster silicon, more memory and a better panel (better wifi wouldn't hurt). I do wonder if Asus might have another Transformer Windows 8.1 tablet down the road, a higher end one...maybe before Christmas?

Wow, this is pretty amazing hardware for $350-400! I'm getting really, really impressed by these Windows 8 tablet/hybrid things, and their pricing. This is kind of what Microsoft's been hinting at for the last decade, but the hardware's finally catching up to the idea.

Dang, these things are practically impulse buys, cheaper than a freaking iPad lolReply

I bought a brand new 15.4" Win8 2.4GHz Pentium dual core full feature Lenovo laptop on sale last year for $270. It's great & I'm real happy with it. Internet-only Chromebook prices need to be less than $200 for me to buyReply

Another terrible review from Anand. It's becoming quite clear to me that this guy is incapable of reviewing any Microsoft products at this point due to his obvious Google/Apple bias.

For starters, this is a $349 device. Who the fuck cares about delta E and calibrated displays at this price point? What a completely irrelevant point to make for a device that is obviously geared at people who couldn't care less about that. The bottom line is it's IPS, has decent resolution, and gets bright enough and has decent contrast. It gets the job done, period.

Also, what is this about Metro IE11 being horrible? Are you kidding me? Metro IE 11 is probably the best TOUCH browser experience you can get on Windows. Desktop IE11, that's a different story. Still, if you are in tablet mode Metro IE11 is perfectly capable for any user.

Finally, battery life. This thing gets 8.5hrs. That is MORE THAN ENOUGH for 99.99% of users. Again this is a $349 device, the fucking garbage Chromebook 11 you just reviewed can barely muster 4 hours and it's nothing more than a glorified web browser running ARM.

This site is going down the tubes and Anand is clearly to blame. He needs to stick to SSD reviews and let other reviewers without bias handle these ones.Reply

I thought it was pretty fair even though I didn't understand the Chromebook fascination, those things are trash. But, when comparing tablets it makes sense to compare these vastly superior machines to those toys since the majority of tablet buyers care more about how it looks and how quickly it loads a Youtube video than what it has inside. Unfortunately, we're a minority by a large margin.Reply

It was a terrible review that focused on all of the wrong things. Nobody cares about how calibrated a display is at a $349 price point. Anand's reviews are becoming increasingly off the mark IMHO.Reply

I still have to disagree, my parents, for example, don't understand that a simple Google search could explain how to fix the calibration issues. If they received the device and took issue with the colors they would quite literally assume it is broken and move on to looking for another device. We can figure it out, and we want options, but most people can only handle simplicity.Reply

Can't find an edit option but for the record I think the t100 looks amazing! I strongly believe that Apple and Android are garbage and, for those of us that plan to do anything serious on a tablet this device will do the job. I'm just defending the practice of writing a review for the majority, even thought it is sad that it has to be done that way.Reply

For starters, the colors of this display are not so wholly imbalanced that your parents are going to think something is wrong with the display. The display is fine for every day users and nobody is likely to complain about quality other than serious enthusiasts or professionals who require such accuracy who would NEVER BUY THIS DEVICE to begin with.

It's an idiotic premise that display calibration is paramount in a $350 device.Reply

They wouldn't take issue with the colors though. Most people are not aware of that kind of nitpicky detail. That said, I think it's fair to point it out, but it's also true that it's irrelevant to most people.

Speaking for myself, I never calibrated my desktop monitor, nor checked to make sure it was calibrated properly. Maybe it is, but I've never even bothered to check. Everything has always looked fine on it. And I'm actually a serious PC user unlike most people. Reply

I think this device is hitting on all cylinders for the target group I think they're after: potential Surface 2 (ARM version) buyers.

* For those that would pay more for the higher performing CPU: you're not the target of this machine. This is for those that shop price first, features 2nd.* For those that would pay more for more RAM, storage, calibrated display, etc. - see my previous comment.* For those wondering about the graphics performance when used for gaming: you're REALLY not the target of this machine.

I for one think this machine appears to do what it is designed to do VERY well. First, hits MUCH lower than Surface 2 price points. 2nd, functions as either a laptop or tablet (duplicate the function of Surface). 3rd have excellent battery life. 4th, run a x86 version of Windows - allowing the vast majority of Windows software to be run. (Surface 2 can't do that, Surface Pro cost even more.)

If you're looking at the T100 vs. the CHEAPEST surface 2 tablet, it's what, $229 MORE by the time you pay for the keyboard cover. What are the advantages at this point of going with the Surface 2 vs. the T100? If you can come up with any, are they really worth a 65% price premium?

If I had any desire for a Surface type computer, and especially if I was on a tight budget, this unit would be at the top of my list for consideration.Reply

Microsoft really screwed the pooch with the Surface 2. At the price point it's at it should be running Bay Trail and be full Windows 8.1. The current Surface 2 should have been Surface Lite 2 and cost at least $50 less. They price their ARM tablet too high, so it has no reason for being when other companies are coming out with full X86 tablets for less. Reply

I almost pulled the trigger on this for Amazon pre-order, but couldn't find any info about a stylus for this. Anyone have any info on it?

My wife really wants a decent tablet/laptop hybrid but really wants the stylus for notetaking/document mark-up. There's also the Dell Venue 8" options but she really wants the 10" and all other 10" I have seen go into the ridiculous Surface Pro price range of $900+.Reply

Cool thanks, wasn't sure about the integration/usability on that, any thoughts? Good functionality with One Note and other COTS software? I haven't used much of the touch functionality of Win8, so I'm not sure if Stylus functionality is native or not. I guess it won't have any place to just slide it into the chassis like some of the ones that integrate Stylus either?Reply

Anand, one issue I have with this review, most of the text approaches the T100 solely as a laptop (paragraphs on the keyboard dock, nothing on balance in hand as a tablet, not one of the gallery images show it detached) Whereas my curiosity in this is as a tablet with occasional laptop functionality. How well does it function as a tablet? Some of the benchmarks help there, but nothing in the Final Words section relevant to that usage mode. Reply

I don't entirely agree. I care about the display quality and the Delta-E does matter to me to a degree. What I would have liked to have heard more was, AFTER calibration, what was the best Delta-E capable.

I am planning on using this for light photo editing on the road when I need to travel light, so the display quality does matter a lot. I don't need spot on color or 100% sRGB (I am dissapointed that % of sRGB color gamut was missing from the test), but if after calibration it is still 10+ off that would be dissapointing.

I'd love to spend more money on a higher quality Windows 8.1 tablet, but roughly $500 is still my price ceiling and so far I haven't seen anyone announce a Windows 8.1 tablet, that is dockable, has a microSD card slot is less than 11" in size and is $500 or less. Pretty much just the T100 so far. I'd be more than happy to pay as much as $100 more for a better/higher DPI display, the z3770 and 4GB of RAM and call it a day (as per my earlier comment. 300Mbps capable Wifi would also be nice).

For a $399 64GB dockable tablet, the thing seems pretty nice. It seems like there are areas of improvement and in a generation or two, they might be improved or for more cost in this generation (I'd be suprised if in a few months Asus doesn't come out with a higher level Windows 8.1 dockable tablet, which is maybe why better silicon/memory/display are not checkable options on the T100. It might saved for a T200 or something coming in $100 or more higher in price).Reply

This is an entry level pad with an keyboard cover, only difference is the hinge. How come this review is so positive? I cant imagine this being a good alternative for either a laptop or a tablet, just too many compromises in the same piece of cheapnes. The only argument is economy, but then again my ThinkPad X61 is still running smooth since 06 so thats not a good argument either as quality is cheaper over time. racing to the bottom with one year of life expectency for each device is not the way to go, with anything. Reply

in Windows x86 OS I dislike the eMMC storage system, it is an execrable design, the heavyweight Windows x86 OS is fully unlike in the lightweight Android OS, Windows needs SATA and PCIe, but Atom Bay Trail T is still no support SATA and PCIe.

Intel actually wanted in Android to compete with ARM processor, does not really want Bay Trail T to help Windows tablet to compete market, because the x86 processor is almost no another competitor! Now is Intel wanted to control the Android market!Reply

Can anyone confirm if the micro USB port on the tablet is for charging only? Or does it support full USB host when not used for charging? A couple of early preview/product announcements indicated it could be used for both, but Anand and Lilliputings both mention the port is to charge the tablet and me ting no USB host functionality one way or another.

The micro USB port on the tablet itself is indeed a USB host port. Just use the appropriate OTG adapter. For charging, the tablet senses the pullup resistor in order to charge at 2A, and so needs the appropriate charger or charging cable, just like the Nexus 7.Reply

This will obsolete A LOT of old computers, especially on the used market, why pay $150-200 for a refurbished, possibly half-broken desktop or laptop when you can probably get one of these for <$300 on sale.Reply

I think the real issue is with Microsoft: "Intel's silicon in the T100 is 64-bit capable but Microsoft still lacks a 64-bit version of Windows 8/8.1 with Connected Standby enabled." Running more than 3GB ram on 32 bit windows is a waste, and Asus chose for sync memory speeds at the same time as lower cost to have Connected Standby enabled to compete with the Androids and Ipad's wake and remain connected.Reply

I agree, only to the extent that I would gladly pay the extra for those bits.

It seems "good enough" for me. Its cheap enough that if/when more compelling hardware comes out, maybe next year, with Airmont architecture that I don't mind the cost in selling off a T100 and getting the next new thing.

I am still crossing my fingers that before I pull the trigger around the holidays that Asus will come out with a T200 with the z3770 and more memory in it (and maybe a slightly nicer display?)Reply

So, are there going to be any updates to the article or an addendum article at some point?

Its great that you got the review out so fast/before anyone else. However, it seems to be lacking some of the things you often do in reviews, like test the Wifi performance and a full battery life test. I did notice in the Surface review you seem to have done a movie battery life test.

It would also be nice to see some more performance benchmarks against some older hardware (if that is even possible).

With them, if possible, can you conduct one with and without the dock attached? That dock is going to be using some amount of power compared to just tablet only. Just curious if it makes any real impact.Reply

Thanks for the fantastic review. I like this device and I'm considering buying one. It's reasonably high quality, addresses a need and is priced right. I won't solely rely on this (just bought a i7 4700HQ laptop), it'll be a good companion to take advantage of the touch screen and long battery life for basic games and videos.Reply

Hmm. My Sony VIAO Pro has (Intel's) "Connected Standby" (64 bit Windows8, now 8.1). So I'm not sure there's a 32 bit constraint. Though for 2 and even 4 gbyte machines, 32-bit Windows will have a somewhat smaller memory and disk footprint.

I've never been happy with Chrome and touch. Seems a mistake to not evaluate the default configuration "full up" before pointing readers towards alternate setups - esp. since their competitors tend not to have this flexibility. For those who must use Chrome it is good to see that it can be set as the default touch browser.

I also have seen a number of low priced laptops that are claimed to be ultrabooks (or qualify to use the Intel brand) that are pretty impressive even with spinning disks. With the default configurations "sleeping" in response to everything a non-technical user would do to quit using a machine (rather than hibernating or shutting down) - most users see what appears to be instant-on because even these cheap laptops have 4gb or more. And cheap no longer means poor keyboards or touchpads - just because it doesn't cost a lot to make doesn't mean they don't work well (says anyone looking at U.S. manufacturing quality compared to Asian.. where cheap no longer means junk).Reply

This is exactly what I've been waiting for. I'm not looking for an 'alternative' to my workhorse laptop (Dell Latitude with all the docking bells and whistles), but an 'adjunct'. I want something really light I can take on short trips, and not haul a laptop, albeit a 5 pound one. I've had an Acer A500 tablet for 2 years, and it's functional for email and web browsing, and great for watching movies on a plane. With Touchdown, it even connects well to Exchange. But with my work, I occasionally need X86 Windows programs, like Dreamweaver, when I need to make an on the run change to a web page, for example. I really don't care if it's slow, as long as I can do it. I'm nervous when I don't have my laptop with me, just in case I need an old reliable Windows program.For me, this is a perfect adjunct. At $399, it's almost a throw away buy. I only plan to use it a few weeks a year, when I'm on the road. The fact that it can also be a 1.2 pound tablet for couch surfing is a bonus. 64G storage plus 64G microSD is fine, because most everything I work on is now stored in the cloud. The USB port offers plenty of extra storage for movies on a thumb drive.I've been waiting for the new Nexus 10 tablet to come out, because I've been looking to upgrade to a faster and lighter Android tablet. But when I found out about this, my money is moving to the Asus T100. I think Asus has hit a home run with this.Reply

with No Ethernet, No 11AC (or even 2x2 mimo N), and especially NO Intel AVX(2) SIMD not to mention 4th Generation Intel® Core™ Processor with Intel® Iris™ Pro Graphics 5200 for a mass produced 2014 retail produce is a no go , an 11.1" pad would be fine too OC for that price Reply

Anand, thanks for this review (and for that of the reference Bay Trail tablet). I'd be very keen on reading your review of the Dell Venue Pro 11 (Bay Trail and i3/5). Is such a review on the cards?Reply

After readin this review and getting an offer from our local distributor, I purchased 64Gb version. I must say, Transformer is exactly what I was looking for. I used Dell lattitude XT2 for a two years now and since I travel a lot and need a lot of data at hand and also spreadsheets and documents, my phone was not enough due to my ageing eyesight and lattitude, albeit 12" and light was too much to carry around all the time. Speed of the unit is non issue for me. it is fast enough, it is a tablet and netbook, it runs smooth and display is very nice, I was expecting less at this price point.

Sinca all my computers and phone are from the same OS generation - Windows 8, I find it very simple to have all the data at hand and all desktops almost the same, no matter which device I use. it saves me A LOT of time I used to spend to transfer, save, carry and also lose those USB keys...So, if one uses it like this and also like entertainment tablet at home, it is all OK. Some heavy duty stuff can take you back to 2005 speed. And battery - I have it with me all the time the whole day and I have never really needed to charge it during the day. With lighter use it gets two days of use easily. It just isn't gamers device or workstation. But there are choices for those too, just they cost almost 5 times more.Reply

Was in the market for one of these until I went into Best Buy and the only one they had had a keyboard that was coming apart around one of the USB ports....looks like the keyboard is really flimsy, but the tablet itself looked more solid...now Im going to get a real laptop, not a hybridReply

T100TA is a interesting unit. The issue here is the docking method. It sketches the screen borders. I am more concern about the quality. I bought 3 units last week and sent 2 back for touch pad alignment. On receiving, the unit cannot be started and had to stick my charger in at the service counter. One could be restarted and we can see that the battery charge status at 70%. The 2nd unit can restart. They advice me to resubmit for repair. All these happened within 5 days of buying. Today the 11 days of buying the 2 units they are still under repair. I just called the service center and they told me that one is ready but the other had to wait for a few weeks for spare parts. This is unacceptable. of the 11 days, two units are repair status for 6 days. Asus Singapore Service Center referance are 130201, 130202, 130449 and 130450. I wonder what is happening to Asus quality.Reply